DETERMINING ATTAINMENT OF CAPABILITY
Assessment of ICT capability is vital as it allows for you to determine and track the progress of students and then to use that information to plan appropriately a path for them to progress. As ICT is predominantly associated with practical outcomes it needs to be embedded into meaningful subject-related context. Therefore, the best way to assess a student’s ICT capability is to give them something interesting to do and then to monitor the approaches they use when completing the task. It is through your own observation of the student in all contexts as an ICT-integrated curriculum is vital. There are several ways of measuring the achievement of students in ICT capability. These include: • • • • • • • •
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Observing how a child goes about a piece of work; Diagnosing difficulties which become apparent over a series of lessons; Observing which planning strategies appear to work and allow the student to succeed in a given area; Collecting significant pieces of work in a portfolio of development; Noting the context of the work and any factors which were significant: the grouping, the time taken, the level of concentration etc.; Noting the view of the student about the piece of work and asking her or him what made the activity so successful/significant; Feeding the information back into the planning process; When appropriate, making a judgement about the student’s level in terms of the level descriptions in the attainment targets for ICT capability in the Learning Continuum of the Australian Curriculum (at the end of the key stages in the primary school – Foundation, Level 1-4); At all times keeping a clear focus on the objectives; this is very important as having a general awareness of other learning taking place. (Adapted from Potter, Sharp, Turvey, & Allen, 2012)
How to I design quality assessment activities?
The finished product does not represent a fair picture of a student’s ICT capability. It is only the final element of a more complex process. In this section, I will discuss how important it is to design ICT activities that promote the learning of ICT techniques and growth of higher order skills. A properly constructed and designed activity will enable you to effectively plan and assess a student’s ICT capability and track their progress. ICT capability is more than just the ability of a student to use ICT techniques. It also involves students having conceptual understanding and making use of higher order skills. For a student to be ICT capable they need to be able to carry out the sets of processes defined in the target level descriptions of the Learning Continuum of ICT capability and this means having a good understanding of the routines, concepts, processes, techniques and higher order skills they have used.
How do the ICT Capability components combine in practice?
Imagine you are producing a worksheet for students in your class. The worksheet would contain an eye-catching heading, images to illustrate the key points and some empty boxes for students to fill in the answers. There would be at least seven steps involved. Below Kennewell (2004, pp111) outlines what is involved.
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